Curse of the Blue Tattoo: Being an Account of the Misadventures of Jacky Faber, Midshipman and Fine Lady (30 page)

Preacher Mather ain't quite up to his usual fire and brimstone this Sunday morning. He don't look like he's been sleeping well. I can't look at him much, though, knowin' what he done. But he gets through it and damns us all to hell for being base sinners and then it's over and I'm thinking I'll be changing churches, me being Church of England and all, who's to keep me here, me not being a lady no more? I can't even sit with Amy, no, I got to sit in the back. Lookin' at the boys ain't no fun anymore, neither, since the Preacher's eyes are on me all the time. Who could object? Mistress would hit the roof if I went to church with Annie and Betsey and Sylvie, them being Catholic and all. I think Abby and Rachel go to another church nearby. I'll have to check it out. It would be fun to go with them.

I help Abby and Rachel serve the midday meal to the few ladies who are at school today, and then go get Gretchen and I'm off on the town. Maybe I'll go see Annie and Betsey. It being Sunday in Boston, ain't nothin' open, so I can't possibly get in trouble. Just a leisurely ride on a really warm fall afternoon, just going out to enjoy the weather, just going out to visit dear friends.

Amy stays back, needing the rest, she says, after yesterday's work at the Pig. She plans to spend the afternoon scribbling in her book. She seems all excited about it, but I don't see why—it seems it's all about my own poor adventures, and who could be interested in that? She's always asking me questions about what I told her back in the hayloft at Dovecote that day—things like, "Jacky, how did you and the others survive the really cold days in winter? You couldn't have lived through
that
wrapped in rags and shivering under a bridge. It's not possible," and I'd think back and say, "Well, you know Cheapside was the market part of London, just like Haymarket is here in Boston, and so there was a lot of horses and 'cause of that, there was a lot of blacksmiths, and on deadly cold nights the smiths would let us curl up next to their forges for the night and the waning warmth of the forges was enough to keep us alive till the next day. We were always careful not to take anything or throw any more coal on the banked fires, though, 'cause then they wouldn't let us do it anymore. I watched the smithies fire up their forges in the morning and learned how to do it myself so that after a while they let me do it for them and so me and the gang would be allowed to stick around the heat for a little bit longer before we were put back in the streets. So, you see, not everybody was mean to us."

She nods and writes.

"And so you also see how no skill, no matter how lowly, is ever learned in vain. I was very proud of the way you handled the serving yesterday in the Pig."

She blushes and continues to write.

***

It is very warm for this time of year—everyone's been saying it's been an uncommon fall—and townspeople are standing outside their doors to take in the last real heat of the year. I look at the
Excalibur
lying down in the harbor. I had gone aboard her several days ago to post yet another letter to Jaimy, but there was nothing from him. I don't know what's happening with that. I just don't know.

Gretchen and I walk lazily downtown and I hold my face up to the warmth of the sun and let my mind wander. I figure I'll visit Sylvie over in the North End and then maybe I'll go see Annie and Bet—

There's a commotion down on the pier where the
Excalibur
lies. I give Gretchie a bit of a kick and we head down to see what is the matter. It don't take long for me to find out.

Oh no! They've got Gully!

It's a press-gang and they've got him good and they're hauling him aboard. He's puttin' up a mighty struggle, but I can see it ain't gonna be any use. They've got him for sure, and when they finds out he was the Hero of Culloden Moor they'll hang him for sure. Gully MacFarland ain't much, but I'd sure hate to see him hang.

And there goes our act, for certain.
Damn! And it was going so well! Damn!

They've pulled him up the gangway, his gangly arms and legs flailing uselessly about, 'cause he ain't strong, he's all just skin and bones, and they've got him on the quarterdeck and rope is being brought to bind him up.

I leaps off Gretchen's back and I runs up the gangway and goes to my knees in front of the Captain and cries, "Oh, Captain, please, if you take our poor Papa all us girls will
starve for sure, Mama being sick and all, and poor Baby Agnes, oh, Sir, what will become of poor, poor Baby Agnes?"

I got real tears runnin' down me face, half believing this drivel myself, and I drives on. "Oh, what will become of her when poor Papa is gone across the sea and can no longer bring home the few pennies he does now? She's poorly, Sir, and we fears the worst, and the other poor tykes ain't got no milk, neither, Sir, and we won't be able to buy milk or medicine for poor Baby Agnes, she's such a dear little thing what don't ask for much..."

The Captain is starting to look a little doubtful and is scratching his chin when a voice calls out from above, "Rummy Gully MacFarland ain't got no kin, Captain...'cept maybe the bottle." There are low, throaty chuckles all around and the sod goes on, "'Cept maybe the bottle, what he cradles to his breast like any Poor Baby Agnes, I'll own."

Damn!

There is outright laughter now and I know this battle is lost.

All right. Plan two. I jump to my feet and whip off my cap and pull off my shoes with my toes and pull down my skirt and roll everything up in a ball and throw it all to the dock and then I hook my toes in the mainmast ratlines and, quick as a flash or any ship's boy, I am up to the maintop and I lean out over the edge and look down at the astounded Captain and crew below. "Ain't no sailor alive what can catch Jacky Faber in the riggin'!"

And with that taunt, I heads higher. If it were not for the fact that Gully's fate hangs in the balance, my chest would be poundin' for pure joy in being aloft again. Still, it does pound as I climb the ratlines that run from the maintop to
the main topsail yard—yards bein' those things that go crossways from the mast and what hold up the square sails—and I turns to look down.

"Bring her down!" thunders the Captain, and two fit and fast-looking seamen head aloft after me. I know I must look foolish climbing in drawers with flounces on 'em, but up I go, anyway, up and up past the main topgallant yard, on up to the main royal yard, and there I wraps my legs around the mast and pulls out me shiv and puts it on a line that is thick as my forearm and hard and stiff as iron from the stress that is put on it, keepin' the mainmast from bein' taken over by wind and weather.

I calls down: "Captain! Stop your men. Call them back down. I have my shiv on the main topgallant stay. I can cut through it in a flash. In front of me are the fore royal braces and aft of me are the main royal braces and the main topgallant braces. I can reach them all and cut through them before your men reach me, and you will be a week fixing the damage and I know you're supposed to leave today. What will the Admiralty say when you come in a week late? Is it worth one pressed seaman?"

The two men stop about fifteen feet below me and look back down at the Captain, who's lookin' up at me with pure hatred writ all over his crimson face. I move the knife to another line and say, "But let's watch the main royal sail fall to the deck first, shall we?" and I pretend to saw away.

"Stop!" roars the Captain, and I stop.

"Look at the pilings on the pier, Captain, and you'll see the tide is ebbing. The same tide you're supposed to be sailing on, Sir," says I. "You must hurry or you will miss it. What will the First Lord say?"

"All right. Let him go," says the Captain, not taking his furious eyes off me.

They take their hands off Gully and he jumps to his feet and runs all gangly down the gangway and across the pier and disappears around a building. Gully is saved. Our act is saved. But now, who will save poor Jacky?

"Tell your men to go back down," I says. I've still got my knife poised on the stay. The Captain nods and the feet of the two men quickly thump on the deck. Why bother chasing me, they're figurin'—I got to come down sometime. I put my shiv securely back in my vest and tighten down the vest's laces, and I start down.

They make a circle about the deck in the place where I must come down so that I won't be able to make a dash for it. The men are hugely enjoying this, of course—what a story it will make, and who cares about one more seaman on board, more or less? Ah, but the Captain, he is not so amused. He mutters something to a sailor next to him and the sailor leaves and comes back with the Cat. He slaps the Cat's nine tails against his palm and grins up at me. The Bo'sun, for certain.

When I get down to the topsail yard, I wails, "Surely that Cat's not meant for me, Sir!" They don't say nothin'. They just waits.

I put my foot in the ratlines that lead down to the maintop, the ratlines on the pier side, to throw them off. I climbs down to the maintop platform, blubberin' and cryin' like I'm afraid I'm about to be whipped, but when my foot touches the main yard, I yelps, "Ha, ha!" and runs the length of it toward the seaward side of the
Excalibur,
and now
they're startin' to shout in alarm, but
it's too late, Mates, you can't catch me now.

I'm at the end of the yard, hangin' out over the water. I turns and grins and dives off.

I tries to make the dive as graceful as possible, havin' an audience and all, and I hits the water right neatly, just like I practiced back in my lagoon down in the Caribbean. Just like the Caribbean. Except for the
cold.

The day's warmth had charmed me into thinkin' that the water would be as warm as the air. It ain't. The water grabs my chest like an iron fist of cold that means to squeeze all the air out of me forever. I fights the panic that wells up in me and opens me eyes and looks about. It ain't near as clear as the water in my lagoon, but I can make out the looming hull of the
Excalibur
in the murk and I makes myself swim toward her, underwater.

I comes up gasping next to the rudder and I moves next to the pintle where I know they won't be able to see me and hangs there, tryin' to make my chest stop shudderin' and shakin'. While I collects myself, I listens to them shoutin' up above.

"
Stupid girl! Drowned for sure!
"

And...

"
'Twarn't our fault. God knows, it 'twarn't our fault!
"

And...

"
Oh, the poor thing! She'll haunt us for sure!
"

And...

"
We've got the wind and the tide! Let's get the hell out of here! We can't hang about for a Goddamed inquest! Damn that girl!
"

That from the Captain.

"
All hands aloft to make sail! Cast off lines One, Two, and Four!
"

I take a breath and go back under and swim over under the pier. My feet touch the muddy bottom and I stand and wrap my arms about myself. Teeth chattering, I hear the swoosh of the sails dropping and filling and the bow of the ship begins to swing out from the dock.

"
Cast off Three and Five! Take a strain on Six!
"

The Captain
is
in a hurry, taking his ship out without using small boats full of rowers to carefully warp her out of the harbor.

"
Take in Six! Shift Colors!
"

The
Excalibur
is under way, free of the land. I swim over to where the water comes up under the dock. I had hoped to find one of those ladders that go down in the water for the loading of small boats, but no such luck and I have to slog through the muck to the shore. There's over a hundred years of harbor filth in that mud, but I got to crawl through it. I am lucky that there ain't no sharp stuff buried there and so I don't get cut. I stay away from the barnacles on the pilings themselves, 'cause I know they'll cut me deep if I so much as brush up against them.

I'm about to gain the shore when I slip and go down, up to my elbows in the slop and my hair flops down in it and I have to kneel in the glop to free my hands but I do, and I figure it's all better than a whipping.

I get to the head of the dock and see that the
Excalibur
is about twenty-five yards from the pier, too far out in the channel to come back to get me, so I strolls out to the end of the dock. I can't let them think that I'm dead, as it would
ruin their voyage. I'm sure the most superstitious of the sailors have already seen my ghost, and great portents of bad luck and disaster have already been cast 'cause of the death of poor me. I can't let them sail out under the shadow of something like that.

I put my fists on my hips and bellows out, "Good sailing, Mates!" I waves and they are not so far out that I can't see the heads snap around and the smiles of relief on their faces when they see me standing here filthy but alive and waving and grinning from ear to ear. I hear whistles and cheers and I see some thumbs held up.

I can see the Captain, too, as he rushes to the rail to glare at me, mouth open in curses I can barely hear. The legend of this day will not go easy on him and I think he knows it. He snaps his jaw shut and gives me a gesture with his finger that I take to mean something nasty. I resists the temptation to turn about and drop my drawers and give him a good look at my bare and muddy backside, but I quells the urge. After all, I am a lady. Sort of.

I have to put my skirt back on over my muddy drawers cause I'll be arrested if I don't, so I do it. Then I go and fetch the faithful Gretchen, who is waiting for me at the end of the dock and whose nostrils quiver as she gets a whiff of me, but she is good and forgives me and lets me lead her to the Pig, where I find Gully stuffing a bag with his things and I ask him what he's doing.

"Och. I'm leavin' this town, Moneymaker. Too hot for old Gully, the Hero o' Culloden Moor. There's more o' King George's ships due in and one of 'em '11 get me, soon enough!"

"Leaving!" I says, standin' there stinkin' and drippin' on the floor and not believin' any of this. "But what about our act? We was doin' so well! You can't break up the act!"